Horizon

HORIZON
Watercolor woodblock print with stencils
26 x 38 inches (97 x 67 cm) on Gekko washi
edition: 2
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The horizon is a circle that divideth part of the world seen from the part that cannot be seen.
– The New Book of Knowledge (1767)

All of the text for these prints thus far has come from Erra Pater: The New Book of Knowledge, a strange (at least to modern eyes) book that began as a perpetual almanac in England in 1535 but later became a compendium of folk wisdom. The New Book of Knowledge was one of America's first bestsellers, undergoing at least 13 American printings between 1767 and 1810. The book includes an explanation of the relationship of zodiac signs to the parts of the body; a discussion of the four humors of the human body with folk medicine recipes; a section on fortune telling; and lore about weather, farming, and the care of animals. What's fascinating to me is that we think of the "Founding Fathers" as being enlightened and modern, but if The New Book of Knowledge is any indicator, they were not.

In the last few steps of this print, I added a dark blue bokashi at the bottom, printed the pensive fisherman in black, and added the text with a stencil.

As Donald Rumsfeld once said about our mission in Iraq, "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know." We made fun of him for saying that, but it's pretty true. I like the video a lot:

A Sea Monster

The next element for this piece is a sea monster. I don't know much about this monster, except that it's from the 1550s and possibly from France. I like how weird it is, with the funny long protrusions, the shark-like teeth, and the human-like eyes that seem to be going in the wrong direction for the rest of the fish. It was a bit of a chore to carve, because it's birch plywood and the image is about 2 feet long. Also my hands got very blue from the pigment left in the board from the last printing session.

If you squint you can see a couple of vertical areas of darker brown wood where I've carved. That darker colored wood was really hard, like knots are hard, and it dulled my tools almost instantly whenever I hit it. Annoying. But I kept on going, and then it was carved.

Today I printed again. The photo below is the result of 5 or 6 applications of color. I'll need to sleep on it before I decide if I need to add more color still or move on to the next step.

Making Waves

 It's been almost two weeks since I've worked on my "Horizons" print. I had several client jobs, which is always a good thing, but it's hard to get back in gear on my own projects when they get interrupted. After I've been away for a while I have to get reacquainted with the project, and I often experience an odd feeling of fear. I guess it's a fear that I won't remember why I was doing what I was doing, or I won't be able to connect back up with the energy flow that I was in when I stopped.

But today I got it going again. As you can see, the print has progressed quite a lot since the last post. The color blue that's there now is a slow build of around 20 applications of color. I didn't count (it might be dispiriting), but because the paper is so thick I'm finding that I have much more control over a slow build of color than I would if I attempted to do it all in one shot.

Here's a closeup of the waves on the right side of the print. These patterns were cut as a reduction on the block and the darker marks were added with a hand-cut stencil. I did it that way because I'm committed to making this print with only one block.

Next up: some more carving.

Second Color From Now On

Today I carved again and began working with the second color. You can see lots of gomazuri (speckling) here in this first blue layer. For me and my skinny arms, speckling is unavoidable at this size and with this very thick paper. By the time I've added all the layers that I expect to add, the speckles will disappear into an appearance of solid color.

The rest of the colors will be various shades of blue and I expect this will take quite a while to complete. More carving and lots of bokashi (gradations) are planned. Then there are the unplanned things…

But first, a holiday weekend!

Musings On Birch Plywood

I'm starting the third very large print in my Almanack series, and I must admit I'm not a fan of birch plywood for moku hanga. But I'm also not a fan of paying $100+ for a sheet of the wood I usually use (shina) when I can have this birch for about $30. So birch ply it is.

Here's a shot of the entire sheet I'm working with. Because I find the carving so unpleasant, I've been adapting my ideas so that I need to do as little carving as possible. The area I've carved out will stay white (the color of the paper), so that happens first. The shape in the middle of the carved area is a "bridge," meant to hold the paper up so it doesn't sag into the carved area.

Above is a closeup of the carved area, with my hand for scale. You can see a void that was sitting just under the veneer, running horizontally just above my hand. Voids are awful if you're trying to do detailed carving, as the veneer above has nothing to hold on to. This is top grade plywood, so there's no way around encountering voids.

The orange color is the glue that holds the inner layers of ply together. It's tough and scratchy when the chisel goes through it and it dulls the tools quickly. If this were shina I would be cutting deeper, as shina plywood glue is soft and not really noticeable. Carving shina plywood feels like carving solid shina.

Here's an edge shot where you can see the plys and the orange glue. This is 1/2-inch birch ply.

This afternoon I printed the top of this block in a lovely pink.